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Oil works threaten health of people in Peruvian Amazon

The communities say they can see the effect that the pollution is having

(Image: Cris Bouroncle/AFP/Getty Images)

The Peruvian Amazon includes some of the most isolated forested regions on the planet, and is home to several uncontacted tribes. It is also the site of widespread contamination from oil spills.

Demonstrations and lawsuits by indigenous peoples in the last decade have exposed the failure of oil companies to clean up their Amazonian spills. But only a handful of studies have offered any data on contamination levels. The latest such study may well be the most comprehensive to date, covering 30 years between 1983 and 2013, and 18 different dumping sites on three watersheds.

In all, nine pollutants were measured, among them lead, cadmium and chlorine. The results suggest that the levels of some of the pollutants exceed international standards.

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Local peoples have long claimed that the oil operations are poisoning them. The issue made international headlines just last month, when several hundred protestors from the Achuar community occupied Peru’s largest oilfield. At the time, Carlos Sandi, president of the Federation of Native Communities in the Corrientes River, FECONACO, was quoted saying&colon; “Almost 80 per cent of our population are sick due to the presence of lead and cadmium in our food and water from the oil contamination.”

Toxic rivers

For decades, oil companies in Peru dumped toxic drilling fluids into rivers, instead of injecting them back into the drill sites in accordance with international protocols. To assuage concerns over drinking water safety, the companies drilled drinking wells for downstream communities, but those communities still fish in the streams and eat game that drinks from the rivers.

The trouble has been that although the communities say they can see the effect that the pollution is having on their health, there have been few studies to quantitatively demonstrate this.

In an attempt to quantify the problem, Antoni Rossell-Mele of the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain and colleagues collated data on pollutant levels in water samples taken from rivers around drilling sites. The data had been collected since 1983 by Peruvian government agencies, the oil companies and some non-governmental organisations, but no one had tried to collate and analyse it, says Rossell.

Rossell’s team showed that 68 per cent of the samples were above Peru’s current limits for lead concentration, and 20 per cent were above cadmium limits.

The team also found pollutant levels were greater downstream compared with upstream, consistent with pollution coming from the oil operations. The downstream pollution significantly decreased after 2007, when regulations were introduced to stop drilling companies dumping toxic waste into rivers.

Rossell cautions that because the data comes from different sources, it is difficult to interpret and compare. That said, his team’s own recent measurements do match those obtained from the government and oil company sources, giving some confidence in the overall dataset.

Oil under the surface

The 2007 regulations are part of new efforts to control the problem. In addition, in March last year, the government declared an environmental state of emergency in the Pastaza river basin because high levels of barium, lead, chrome and petrochemicals were found in the water.

Rossell’s data suggests the 2007 rules have gone some way to addressing the problem. But he notes that frequentoil spills are also a concern, particularly because local communities still rely largely on game hunting and fishing for food.

No one knows how widespread the spills are. The pipelines cut through the Amazon, are frequently rusty and virtually impossible to monitor. “These places are very, very remote,” he says. “It’s difficult to know what happens everywhere.” Plus, heavy rainfall washes the spills off the surface. But in some places, he says, the ground is so saturated with oil that simply punching a hole makes it spurt up to the surface.

Locals have reported finding wildlife covered in oil. Rossell and colleagues set up camera traps in the forest and caught pictures of large game, including tapirs, to support these claims. It may be that the animals are attracted by the taste of the salty water that is brought up to the surface with the oil.

The results were presented today at the Goldschmidt conference in Sacramento, California.